A Veiled Antiquity (Torie O'Shea Mysteries) by Rett MacPherson Read Free Book Online Page B

them is written to a countess, but no name is given, only her title.”
    “Let’s take these into my office. It looks like rain, no?”
    Yes, it did look like rain. Dark clouds were moving in from the west at a fairly fast pace. A slight wind kicked up some leaves around the patio.
    I didn’t have to tell her that she held photocopies. She could tell that the paper was not old. It had taken me hours to copy them because the papers were so fragile and I was afraid that they would get torn.
    “Maybe you have found the correspondence of a dangerous liaison, ” she said with a smile.
    We entered her den, which looked like something right out of a French château; vanilla-colored walls with dark cherry trim, large settees everywhere, and a marble fireplace were the highlights of the room. The den included bookshelves that went from floor to ceiling on two walls. I found this quite impressive because she had twelve-foot ceilings. She had a table set up in the middle of the room, complete with fluorescent lamps and magnifiers.
    She sat down, grabbed her glasses from the end of the table, and began scanning the papers. “Get me a piece of paper from my desk,” she said without looking up. “And a pencil.”
    I obliged. After a few minutes she looked up at me, with a disturbed look on her face. “Torie, I may need a few days to work on these.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Nothing’s wrong. I just think they are going to be a little difficult to translate. They are in two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old French. The handwriting is not that great.”
    I suppose I didn’t look completely convinced.
    “At the least it’s going to take me twelve hours. Do you have twelve hours to sit in my den and watch me?”
    “Well, no. But … well, not to insult you, Camille, but I’m not real thrilled about—”
    “Leaving them with me.”
    “No. It’s not you. I’m just really impatient. Not to mention generally paranoid. It has nothing to do with you.”
    “Well, some of them may never be translated.”
    “Why?”
    “Look at this one,” she said. “It’s nothing but numbers.”
    “Like an accounting report or something?”
    “No. It’s in a code.”
    The implications of that rocked me to my feet. In code? What in the heck had I found? What the heck did Marie Dijon have? I swallowed nervously.
    “It would have to be decoded first, and then translated. But here’s the tricky part. The numbers are written in French, as in quatre onze vingt. But who’s to say that the words that they spell out will be in French? They could spell out words in English, Dutch, Russian. Any number of languages and even then the words could be purely allegorical. It just depends on how far the author tried to go to keep this information safe.”
    I felt the blood run from my face. Surely if it was something from the 1700s it wouldn’t be pertinent to this century’s events.
    “Of course, who’s to say they are even authentic? Whatever they say will have to be authenticated. You know, the originals will have to be dated?” she said. That was the only indication she gave that she was aware I had the originals elsewhere. They were in my safety deposit box, to which only Rudy and I had keys.
    “Yes, I know.”
    “Even if they are dated at the eighteenth century, the author could have been writing a novel, or could have written false truths. It doesn’t mean anything.”
    Why was she trying so hard to convince me? She had barely glanced at the documents and yet she was acting as if she already knew that they contained earthshaking news. I didn’t feel as though I could leave these documents with her. And yet, if I didn’t? Who could I get to translate them without putting me in debt? I didn’t know anybody else.
    “I’m not all that concerned about their value or authenticity,” I said. “I was just curious as to what they said.”
    “I will keep them in my safe. Yes? Will that make you feel better?”
    No, not really. But it’s not